Along with Hawks assistant Mike Kitchen, accomplished thoroughbred owner Mike Pegram and prominent Kentucky breeder John Sikura, Quenneville and Tice are co-owners of the 4-5 morning favorite in Hawthorne Race Course's Grade III $500,000 prep for the May 17 Preakness.

With Stanley Cup titles in 2010 and '13 on his resume, Quenneville needs no affirmation that he can excel at the highest level. So he's taking Midnight Hawk's promising racing career in stride and focusing on trying to win Game 2 of the opening round of the Stanley Cup playoffs on Saturday against the Blues in St. Louis.

But the horse owner came out Friday when he summed up Thursday's triple overtime loss in Game 1: "It's like getting beat on a bob of the head in the Illinois Derby."

Thanks to modern technology — and barring another overtime game — Quenneville hopes to see the race.

"It could be in the coach's office (in the dressing room), could be on the bus, could be on the plane, could be anywhere," he said.

"We're confident he can run a big race. The horse has been training well and he has run hard every single time. … How lucky can we be to have a horse like this?"

The past performances of Midnight Hawk's seven adversaries suffer when measured against the resume of the California-based colt since he began his career for Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert with a decisive victory in mid-December. He won the Grade III Sham at Santa Anita in his second start, then finished third in the Grade II Robert Lewis and second in the Grade II San Felipe and Grade III Sunland Derby.

Only three of his seven opponents — Global Strike, King Cyrus and Emmett Park — even have run in graded stakes and the best performance in their collective total of four graded outings is Global Strike's sixth in the Sunland.

"Joel and I are coaches and when you're a coach you look for the best matchups," said Tice, who formerly was the Vikings coach and then the Bears offensive coordinator earlier in his career. "You should take a horse and look at it the same way, which is what Bob Baffert did."

"Here we have a horse who is pretty consistent but he's still young (a May 14 foal) and a little immature. How do we match up with those horses?" Tice said. "We see a $500,000 race in Illinois and we're pretty excited about the matchups. If he runs his race we should have a nice time when Joel gets back from St. Louis on Saturday night."

Pegram is the owner of Hoppertunity as well as a co-owner of Midnight Hawk.

In 1998, he and Baffert just missed having a Triple Crown winner when Midnight Hawk's grandpa, Real Quiet, lost the Belmont by a nose at the wire. In 2007 Pegram and Baffert won the $2 million Breeders' Cup Sprint with Midnight Lute, son of Real Quiet and father of Midnight Hawk.

"All three of those guys — Coach Q, Mike Tice and Mike Kitchen — are in the horse business to win, not just to say they ran (in America's most renowned race)," Pegram said. "The Kentucky Derby looks like it's a little too much for Midnight Hawk at this time. He ran into buzzsaws in his last two races but he never has done anything wrong."

For many years, Pegram has boarded his broodmares at Sikura's 1,500-acre farm in Kentucky where the commercial breeder has Midnight Lute standing at stud.

Sikura had a pre-racing connection with Quenneville — they were Junior hockey teammates in Windsor.

After going their separate ways for many years, Sikura said they renewed their friendship after a chance meeting in the Saratoga paddock about 20 years ago. Sikura went on to introduce Quenneville to his friend Pegram and Pegram, in turn, introduced them both to his friend, Tice. Quenneville then introduced all of them to Kitchen.

"Joel is a passionate fan of racing," said Sikura, who foaled and raised Midnight Hawk and picked out the colt when the others told him "Find us a horse!" after deciding they wanted to join with him in forming a five-man ownership team. "Joel appreciates and respects a good horse and the whole essence of the sport.

"For me, horse racing and hockey are the greatest sports that exist. Unlike Joel and Mike (Kitchen), I wasn't good enough to play in the NHL but I play in the NHL in the horse business."